La Chanteuse et La Danseuse
by S. Snowflake
Summary: Roger remembers a song he wrote long ago and it brings back memories he'd rather forget of a certain someone. Can Mimi help him escape his past? Roger and Mimi pairing with some light Roger and April. Rated T for language, etc.
1. Part I

_Author's Note/Disclaimer: This is my first Rent story ever... whoo! I got the idea for this from writing a few Rent drabbles on Myspace and Deviantart, but really, this was (and is I guess), an experiment to see if I can write in this category. I'd like to thank my beta reader for this story, Rapp Fan, who went over two drafts of this and helped me out with the plot. I'd also like to thank my little sister, the Ghost Peacock as she calls herself on Deviantart, for reading it. Lastly, I own none of the characters or anything else here_._ As I've heard this show quoted in disclaimers here before, "I don't own emotion, I rent."_ _Okay, well that about wraps it up, enjoy!_

_*S. Snowflake

* * *

  
_

_**La Chanteuse et la Danseuse**_

_**(The Singer and the Dancer)  
**_

**Part I**

_*** * ***_

"_Nothing; your smile reminded me of-"_

"_-I always remind people of-who is she?"_

"_-She died…"_

Music played faintly from the loft window on the corner of 11th Street and Avenue B. Soft notes drifted down from the strums of a guitar as the entrancing tune continuously repeated and morphed. It was certainly not a full-fledged song, as the melody seemed to be experimental at best, but for the few who heard it in the run-down building, it was a familiar complement to the ever-Bohemian atmosphere.

Roger Davis, the bohemian musician, was playing the guitar on the top floor. He was the singer and composer, and was working on forming a rock band like the one he had before… well, before his life seemed to end. It was a good idea, but it was more difficult than it seemed. Through his own devices in the past two years, Roger had driven many of his friends away from him. Hopefully though, Roger might still obtain the burning dream in his heart to show the world the one great song he had created now that he was back in Alphabet City.

He formed a more stable melody with his guitar and began to sing:

"_The night you came into my life,_

_When there's moonlight I see your eyes..."_

He paused, thinking over the verses again. _It's almost ready, but still, I need to change some words._

Without a second longer of pondering, he began to improvise. Sometimes just leaving a project for a moment or two might make some other ideas flow into his mind,. He closed his eyes and thought of what the new song meant. It was about the girl he loved; her hair in the moonlight and her eyes that called to him so. He could just barely see her face in his mind when his song changed once more. The chords were somehow shifting beyond his control or care, and they formed another song.

_Am I playing… no, I can't be playing __**that**__ old song,_ he thought, but then listened to the music that his fingers were subconsciously creating. It was indeed "that old song", and it made him think about other things: A time not too long ago. A freedom that had once been his. And another girl he had known before.

Again, without thinking, he began to sing:

"_That sunny smile I see, when you look at me…_

_Oh-oh, that sunny smile…"_

He remembered the old chords and continued:

"_When you smile at me I see springtime all the time._

_Oh-oh, that sunny smile…"_

The smile belonged to a girl Roger once loved. He had met her during a performance for his old band. As he sang to the screaming crowd, he saw her in the blinding light of the floods above him. She did not scream mindlessly like the rest, she just smiled at him. Her smile had him hooked from that moment and he never forgot it.

Soon after, he asked the girl out. Her name was April, a springtime name for her springtime smile. Her hair was a strawberry blonde, but definitely not naturally so. She wore heavy makeup, making her eyes look almost like a cat's, and her nails were long and painted a shiny black like the midnight sky. April was always interesting to talk to, as she always seemed to want to have fun, but there was something about her Roger found even more intriguing: she was a singer.

When April sang, her smile reflected her feelings. If the song was happy, her smile beamed brightly. If the song was sad, her face could evoke tears, whether they were Roger's or her own. April's voice was the other feature that stood out in Roger's mind as being specifically her own. She never really had formal voice training, as many Bohemians did not in their arts, but her voice flickered through sounds of living and dying, like the dimming glow of a candle. It took some time for him to realize it, but Roger had quickly fallen in love with her. \

"Hey, April?" he would have asked on one of those nights when he was writing a new song and had his girlfriend over.

"Yeah, Rog?" she would have replied quietly on the couch beside him, twirling his hair around with her fingers affectionately or perhaps smoking a cigarette and slowly letting out a puff of the thick, gray smoke.

"Mind singing to this for a sec?" he would ask, and then strum on the guitar. He would sing the words softly to himself, then play the chords over again so that April could hear them. She would breath deeply, and through all the cigarette smoke and dank air of the loft, she could make the music just click.

She liked singing for him. Roger found that out during her more upset nights. She was definitely emotional and very easily upset. When they did get in fights, they were simply awful. The drugs all made things get unreal, and they could no longer think things out by themselves, so they would fight. The final solution required a good smoke or drink, but at least it would stop eventually and they could talk and hopefully sing together. It calmed them both down just to harmonize. Sometimes though, after their ceremonial substances, passion, and music, April would start crying.

"Nobody would care if I was gone, you know," she whispered to Roger one night on the couch as he played.

Roger stopped picking at the guitar. "It's not true, April."

"Sure it is. Mom and Dad didn't want me, that's why I'm here, starving."

"They'd still care if you vanished, or… or worse," he said.

"How d'you know, Rog? You've never met them. They hate me, Rog." She sobbed. "As soon as Mom found out I was on drugs, she didn't want to be around me, and Dad, well, Dad just kept my college money for himself. If I died, they'd still have my brothers to be proud of… Fucking Steve! Fucking Brent!" She growled. "Good boys who got real jobs instead of being a fucking artist!"

"April…"

She sighed and inched closer to Roger as he played his guitar again, singing in an ironically haunting voice:

"_Oh-oh, that smile that sings like April showers,_

_Bring your May flowers to me…"_

"You're singing it wrong," Roger said. "You can't sing that song like that."

April scoffed and looked into her stash. "Well, shit. I don't have anything," she muttered and sighed again before leaning her head on his shoulder. After a few minutes, she began to fall asleep as Roger kept playing the song he wrote for her like a lullaby.

"Rog?" she asked, half awake.

"Yeah, babe?"

"I think I need you, or else I'd-I'd really lose it." She gave him that smile he adored so much. "Promise me you won't give up on us… on me?"

He grinned back. "Why would I ever give up on you?"

If only Roger could have known that April had meant those words about losing it at the time. He might have then been able to reverse April's fate.


	2. Part II

_Author's Note: Okay, I really don't like begging, but here goes! Guys, I do check my reader traffic, and there has been a good chunk of people reading this and only one review (and Bialy, I love you for it!). I mean, I know I'm an amateur in this category, but couldn't you throw a poor puppy in the corner a bone when she needs it most? All right, my pathetic begging for consolation in a dark age is done. I really am sorry that I'm emotional, but my life's kind of in the toilet right now, so writing and art are really all I have to turn to. So, here's my update and confession.  
_

_*S. Snowflake_

* * *

_**La Chanteuse et la Danseuse**_

**Part II**

"_His girlfriend April left a note saying,_

_'We've got AIDS'_

_Before slitting her wrists in the bathroom…"_

Roger should have known that living the way they were was asking for trouble, but the drug sharing was like a bad habit. It happened at parties, gatherings, just about anything. There was little talk of who they had known in the past either, but Roger knew April had spent some time in the dark shadows of the nightclubs and other places where she no doubt met some equally dark and shadowy men. Either way, somehow, one of them contracted it. HIV…which would become AIDS…the disease that was only fatal, no other road, no other way. Neither of them had known about it until that one day when April went to the doctor and found out the truth alone.

For a few days after the visit, April would neither eat nor drink. Anything pleasurable was out of the question. She did not talk much, and never said anything about her visit to the doctor. She was like a shut door with no answers escaping or entering. A beautiful spring day came soon afterward that just couldn't be missed. It was still cold as hell outside, but none of the friends wanted to stay in.

Roger tried to convince April to leave the loft as she lay on the couch, emaciated and shaking.

"Babe, you wanna go out for a little while? We could sit in the park and I'll tune up the guitar. We could even mess with Mark and Maureen. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

She sat coldly and replied with a quiet, "no."

Roger was the last to leave the loft that day, somehow dreading to leave April alone by herself, but he did. How he would regret it afterward…

Roger had not been the one to clean up the blood. The police had already taken care of most of it, and Mark finished the job bravely by cleaning up the stains. Maureen, Mark's girlfriend at the time, threw up at her discovery of April's body in the bathroom, and for once, her dramatics were all too appropriate. It was not too bloody a scene (surprisingly, since April had slit her wrists), but her lifeless, crumpled body was enough of a chilling memory to last an entire lifetime. Mark had also been the one who found the note first on the scene. The words were scrolled on the back of April's blood work card: We've got AIDS.

_So, that was why it had happened. She gave up on living since she knew what the virus would already do to her,_ Roger thought. _She couldn't have told me while she was alive, so she told me in this way_

For awhile, things stood still in the loft; time seemed an illusion. Benny took his time indulging in his dreams of opening a cyber studio, and eventually he met Allison Gray. Maureen cried about it for the first week or so, but soon searched for sources of distraction from Mark or (more likely), whomever she could get her paws on. Only Mark and Collins tried to help Roger through the difficult time he was having.

"It wasn't your fault," Collins said to Roger who was in the middle of a fit from drugs and depression.

"Nobody would've known she'd do that," Mark added, watching the scene happen as if he were filming it.

"I-I shouldn't've l-left her-r-r," Roger choked, shaking and sobbing at the same time. "That bitch! She left me here, like this!"

Collins and Mark had both lost their patience, and Collins finally shook Roger's arm as he yelled, "Roger, knock it off! Don't you see you're going as crazy as she went?"

Roger shoved him off and breathed deeply to get some air. "-And I'm going to die, just like she did. I gave up on her, and now I'm giving up too."

Mark and Collins watched their friend shake uncontrollably that night and listened to his muttering. There would be no more consoling that night. They knew that things were about to change soon, and not for the better.


	3. Part III

_Author's Note: Here's the final chapter of this story. For those of you who have been waiting for the Roger and Mimi fluff, here it is! Please leave me a review, guys. I know you're out there and there's a little green button that's just screaming to be pressed at the bottom of the page! Thank you, and enjoy!_

_*S. Snowflake_

* * *

_**La Chanteuse et la Danseuse **_

**Part III**

"_Dusting desire, starting to learn,_

_Walking through fire without a burn…"_

The transition from a tight family living in that loft to the separate, recognizable circle of friends was too rapid to believe. April's death had sparked a chain reaction for other things to happen: Benny getting married to Allison, Maureen meeting her girlfriend Joanne, Collins leaving for MIT. Mark helping Roger out with his withdrawal.

April's parents had her funeral back in their hometown. The Bohemians, the swine who had caused this tragedy, were not invited. Roger never had the chance to say goodbye to April. Not before he left that day of her death, not before the paramedics took her body away, and not even at her funeral. He never saw that sunny smile again, never told her how much she meant to him, and never told her how much he needed to be needed by someone.

Playing his guitar in the loft, Roger barely realized how much time he had lost. It had been awhile since he had put some thought into April's death, but the song had reactivated memories and pains that he hoped he would have just forgotten.

"Roger?" asked a girl's voice from behind the door in the hall. "Babe, I know you're in there. You're playing your guitar."

Roger stood up and walked to the door, putting on a pseudo smile and holding back a tear or two. When he opened it, he found the person he was expecting. "Hey," he said to the skinny, brown-eyed girl standing in the loft doorway.

She smiled, the glow of her face growing brighter with it. "Hey. I picked up that outfit from work and- babe, what's wrong?"

Roger twitched a bit. So, it _was_ obvious. "I'm fine, Mimi."

Mimi held his hand lightly. "You don't look like you're fine. What's up?"

Roger turned to sit back down on the couch. "-Just… playing this old thing." He demonstrated by playing the song he had before, plucking the strings with his fingers and creating the music flowing through his heart. He could almost hear April singing with it. _Don't leave me yet,_ he thought.

Mimi cocked her head to the side like a curious kitten looking at something it could pounce on. "I've never heard you play that song," she finally said.

Roger continued playing, but just barely looked up at Mimi. "I don't play it much anymore. It's old."

"-But it's good. You should play it again," Mimi countered as her head swayed from side to side to the notes she was hearing. She tapped a foot on the floor playfully as the song as he played. A thought struck her then, or maybe it was inspiration. Whatever it was that made her do it, Mimi rose from her spot on the couch and began to dance. It was not the erotic sort of dancing she did at The Cat Scratch Club or anything like a sexy courtship, rather, it was moving art. This was the kind of dancing she really liked to do. It was the kind with feel and emotion, not just showing off her beautifully frail body. The music naturally made her do it, and she felt alive in the action of it.

Roger looked up from the guitar and saw what his girlfriend was up to. _Dancing in here to __**this**__ song?_ he wondered. _She really has no idea does she? _But instead of ridiculing her, he shook his head and sang again:

"_That sunny smile…_

_Singing to me like April showers,_

_Bring your May Flowers to me._

_Over the winter cold we go,_

_Oh-oh, just you and me…"_

Mimi stopped dancing and posed dramatically in cool posture. "You wanna dance?"

Roger stopped playing and stood up. "No tricks this time?"

Mimi grinned. "No tricks." She took his hands and tried to guide him along in her billowing, waltzing, and fluttering path, even though Roger was not much of a dancer himself. "I've got you, now you sing."

"Without my guitar?" Roger asked.

"No, go ahead and dance with it. Of course without the guitar!" she said.

Roger sighed and sang softly:

"_Never I guess right or wrong_

'_Cause your smile takes me home again_

_Home with you,_

_Where I'll belong."_

A silent tear slid down his cheek, not stopping until it hit Mimi's chest. She noticed it immediately. "Roger, what's going on?"

Roger let go of her and they stopped dancing altogether. "It-it's that song," he muttered weakly. "I wrote it for _her_."

The realization hit her. "Oh, babe, I'm sorry, I never would've meant…I'll go."

Roger looked up, watching Mimi pack her things back into her bag. "No, don't go, Meems," he said slowly. Mimi looked at him puzzled and he filled in pathetically, "I…I liked dancing with you."

She approached him more slowly. "You sure?" she asked.

"Yeah," Roger muttered with a returning smile.

They danced again, not singing or doing anything that might cause more trouble. Mimi was not April, and she never would be, but she was just as much Roger's love. She was just as much someone he could not take for granted. He tried to hold the moment in his heart with her head resting on his arm, swaying from side to side in the current of the music river. Mimi stopped dancing shortly and looked into Roger's eyes with her searching eyes of brown that he loved so much about her. If only it were nighttime, then he might see the moonlight shimmering in the strands of her hair.

He kissed her on the nose and hummed April's song once more. _It couldn't hurt to sing about sunny smiles and April showers,_ he thought. _Not anymore._

**THE END**


End file.
